Although up to six suns shine in Asimov’s Lagash, this one is not far behind. Scientists have published what appears to be the discovery of a planet orbiting three stars: a circumtriple planet.
Located 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation Orion is the star system GW Ori . Surrounded by a gigantic disk of dust and gas, it has a fascinating characteristic: it does not have one star, but three.
As if this were not enough, the mystery does not end there either because the GW Ori disk is divided in two , similar to if there is a large gap between them in the rings of Saturn, and the outer ring is tilted around 38 degrees. The opening in the rings is not insignificant; about 15,000 million kilometers wide. What is the cause of this large gap in the planetary disk? Scientists believe it could be caused by the formation of one or more planets in the system, and if this is the case, it would be the first known planet to orbit three stars at the same time, according to a statement from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
A more frequent phenomenon than previously thought
Finding exoplanets is proving to be a more common task than it seemed, but of course, most have a sun, like us . Sometimes we come across bizarre systems with up to two suns or stars but this would be the first time, if confirmed, that we found a planet that is orbiting three stars at the same time.
The star system is made up of two stars that orbit each other every 241 days, and a third that orbits the other two in 11.5 years. The system itself is not a new find: astronomers already had it in their sights because it had a huge protoplanetary disk made up of three misaligned rings. This characteristic made them want to delve into the reason for this mismatch in the rings (since they theorized at the time that it could mark the presence of one or more massive planets not yet detected).
Although the planet (or planets) cannot be seen at the moment, the researchers believe that the formation of a giant gas planet would be the best explanation for the mysterious space in the dust cloud. It could even be a “child” planet, only a few million years old.
Logically, the question of whether the planet exists is still being debated, but the observations of the ALMA telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile in the coming months may provide us with an answer. Although it will not be easy to detect them because misaligned planets are very difficult to detect with the transit method, which is the most common one we use to find exoplanets. It’s going to be hard, but not impossible.
Referencia: GW Ori: circumtriple rings and planets
Jeremy L Smallwood, Rebecca Nealon, Cheng Chen, Rebecca G Martin, Jiaqing Bi, Ruobing Dong, Christophe Pinte
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 508, Issue 1, November 2021, Pages 392–407, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2624
Published: 17 September 2021
